Overall, there are now around 120,000 battery-powered cars on Britain’s roads, and this is expected to grow to 10m by 2035. From the modest Nissan Leaf, to the futuristic Tesla, the choice of electric vehicles is expanding, and various car manufacturers have announced ambitious plans to develop even more electric vehicles to suit a range of tastes and budgets.

The benefits of moving to electric are clear – as well as lower emissions, they are also cheaper to run– costing less than half as much than petrol-powered equivalents.

While motorway services and petrol stations will soon be required by law to install charge points for electric cars, simply replacing existing fuel pumps with EV chargers will not provide sufficient capacity, as at present, charging an electric car can take anywhere between 30 minutes to a couple of hours. Additional charging stations will have to be incorporated into parking spots – either on the road, at home or in car parks.

The planning system is already taking some practical action to address this. Both planning policy and development management provide important delivery mechanisms.

At the regional level, some policies require planning authorities to incorporate facilities for charging electric vehicles. For example, The London Plan states:

“developments in all parts of London must… ensure that 1 in 5 spaces provide an electrical charging point to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles”.

Several local authorities also use local plan policies to require electric vehicle provision, and others use their development control powers to require developers to provide electric vehicle charging points.

Some authorities have also taken opportunities to broker EV via non-planning routes, for example, the provision of public recharging point provision through grants. One such example – the On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme– was set up in 2016, and provides up to 75% of the cost of procuring and installing chargepoints.

As well as increasing the overall number of available charging stations, planners will need to ensure that they are adequately distributed within a city so that there’s always one within reasonable driving range. Specifying EV charging points on new developments runs the risk of a ‘scattergun’ approach, particularly where developments are concentrated in specific areas. Local authorities would do well to adopt a strategic and planned approach to EV provision to ensure adequate coverage. This will be particularly important in rural areas, as electric cars typically have a maximum range of around 150 miles. ’Range anxiety’ is an affliction suffered by many electric car drivers!

While various grants are available for electric car owners to install charging infrastructure at their homes, it is also not yet clear how home EV charging will work in densely populated areas without private parking, such as large blocks of flats. One potential solution may be the use of massive batteries kept in shipping container-style boxes, with up to 50 charging points attached.

There have also been concerns about the ability of the national grid to cope with millions of cars being plugged in to charge every evening. Encouraging drivers to charge ‘smart’ at off-peak times may be the way forward.

EV technology is an area of fast-paced change and addressing the many challenges that it presents will require planners to adopt similarly innovative and forward-thinking solutions. With advances being made on contactless under-road EV charging, it may not be long before electric streets charge our cars on the move. We in the Information Service are excited to see what the future holds, and will be keeping abreast of the latest developments in both policy and practice.

The Knowledge Exchange provides information services to local authorities, public agencies, research consultancies and commercial organisations across the UK. Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in policy and practice are interesting our research team.

In 1996, Unicef launched one of the first initiatives to promote a child-friendly approach to urban design – the Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI). Since then, interest in the design and development of ‘child-friendly cities’ has grown significantly.

There is a common perception that the provision of parks and playgrounds is sufficient to make an environment ‘child-friendly’. However, in reality, many different aspects of the urban environment have significant impacts upon children’s health, wellbeing and development.

“There are three things that children need in their normal everyday world: face-to-face social interaction with a community of all ages; direct interaction with nature; and the chance to develop independence at every age”

Good urban design clearly has a central role to play in the creation of such environments. But what does this mean in practice?

One indicator of good urban design is the extent of children’s independent mobility. However, over the past few decades, this has declined significantly. For example – the number of primary school children travelling home from school alone fell by 61% between 1970 and 2010. High traffic volumes and unwelcome public spaces are partly responsible for this. These are two areas that planning can directly influence.

Studies have found that a carefully planned mix of accessible green spaces within a reasonably dense structure might provide the most child-friendly environment. A dense urban structure promotes active journeys to school (e.g. walking or cycling), increases independent mobility, and means that locations meaningful to children, such as parks and green spaces, are only a short distance away.

Other child-friendly design elements include:

parks, playgrounds and sports and community centres

zones with priority for pedestrians, players and cyclists

access to landscaped green areas, open spaces and nature

affordable and accessible transport options

For children living in poorer areas, opportunities for play in and around the street can be an important alternative to more costly leisure and recreational activities. Indeed, Play Streets – where streets temporarily close to enable children to play –have been successful in Bristol and London.

Leading child’s play researcher and advocate, Tim Gill, highlights a succinct 10-point checklist for child-friendliness, based on the work of a Vancouver urbanist and writer Jillian Glover. Important factors for building a more child-friendly city include density, family–oriented housing, walkability/bikeability, and access to nature.

Intergenerational interaction

Urban design not only influences the way that children use and access public spaces; it can also facilitate interaction between different generations. Flexible public spaces and community initiatives such as gardening and food-growing projects provide great opportunities for young and older people to come together.

Research by Future Cities Catapult has looked at ways of encouraging better intergenerational encounters in urban areas. Examples include shared service hubs and ‘accidental’ encounters in public space. There is a clear crossover between the needs of children and older people in cities.

Designing for teenagers

Of course, children have varied needs across their life course – from babies to older teenagers. A study by Growing Up Boulder – a child-friendly city initiative in Boulder, Colorado, USA – found that some of teenagers’ most consistently requested features for public space included Wifi, affordable and diverse food options, and lighting and safety features.

A city that works for everyone

As well as addressing the different needs of different groups of children, there is also a need to cater for children and young people with specific needs, such as those on the autistic spectrum or those with disabilities.

As such, child-friendly urban design shares many of its principles with that of other movements, including the design of cities for older people, those with disabilities and those with dementia. Indeed, many of its principles, such as improved road safety, walkability and accessibility of public transport, are of universal benefit, regardless of age or disability status.

As Peter Madden, Chief Executive of the Future Cities Catapult, has observed::

”If a city works well for very old and very young people, it is likely to be a city that works for everyone”.

By 2050, it is estimated that nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. In the UK, this figure is expected to be closer to 90%. This demographic shift, along with population growth in general, means that more children than ever are growing up in urban environments.

This has a number of implications for the town planning system. Creating a ‘child-friendly’ environment requires much more than just ensuring there are enough parks and play spaces.

As well as having a fundamental human right to participate in decisions that affect them, there are clear links between children’s health, wellbeing and development and the quality of their surrounding environment. Particular areas of influence include:

housing quality

road safety

the walkability of an area

opportunities for cycling

play facilities

access to greenspace

local amenities such as libraries and community/leisure centres

environmental pollution

community safety/fear of crime

access to healthy food choices

One key way to address this is to involve children in the planning process. As well as helping to create safer, more suitable environments for children to grow up in, involving children in decisions about their local areas has a number of additional benefits. It helps to build social capital, helps children to form a bond with their home city, and fosters a feeling that they can help to make a change in the world they live in. For planners, involving children can help to provide them with a new perspective on how children use their environments, and highlights issues that adults may not recognise or fully understand – potentially leading to improved design.

Participation methods

Research published in 2011 found that children’s voices had been “notably absent from UK planning and regeneration policies throughout the past two decades”. Children’s participation in planning tended to be focused on services that were designed ‘for them’ rather than ‘with them’, and little attention was given to children’s roles in the wider regeneration agenda.

However, there are some examples of successful involvement. Methods that have been used successfully range from formal mechanisms such as youth councils, child-led surveys and data collection, to informal ones such as photography, computer-aided mapping, model building and role-play. Dr Jenny Wood reports that she had success with a delightfully low-tech method, where children were asked to annotate A3 OS maps with a range of stickers, post-it notes and pens, to highlight their likes, dislikes, routes to school and any other information they felt was important about their local area.

At the other end of the scale, some particularly innovative examples capitalise on recent technological advances. These include the use of mobile phone apps to make traffic reports (see Case Study 1 below), the use of Minecraft (see Case Study 2 below), mapping their local area (Children’s Tracks in Norway) and the use of the SoftGIS methodology in Finland.

Case Study: Traffic Agent, Norway

A new app-based initiative in Oslo, ‘Traffic Agent’, directly involves children in transport planning. It enables children to provide direct feedback on road safety, based on their own experiences. The app makes use of ‘gamification’ whereby users act as “secret agents” for the city, sending immediate reports on their route to school when they come across, for example, a difficult crossing on the street or an area of heavy traffic.

The project lead, Vibeke Rørholt, illustrates its impact: “I received a telephone call from the mother of a little boy who had reported some bushes that meant he couldn’t see when he was crossing the street. And two days later the bushes were cut. She phoned in saying he’s so happy that he could make this happen.”

Case study: Blockbuilders, England

Blockbuilders is an innovative method of involving communities, and children and young people in particular, in the town planning system.

Using the hugely popular game, Minecraft, the Blockbuilders team create a 3D representation of a local area. The model is then used as the basis for consultation with the wider community, and can be interacted with and played with to enable communities to help design and shape their local areas. Projects have included the development of Lewes Neighbourhood Plan, the development of a family-friendly park by Brighton and Hove City Council, and an interactive map of Brighton and Hove.

Common success factors for children’s effective participation

There is no one definition of ‘good’ or ‘effective’ participation practice – the most suitable method depends on the age of participants and the nature of the decision that they are being involved in. However, in their review of children and young people’s participation, the Ecorys project identified a number of common ‘success factors’ for children’s effective participation in planning and regeneration. These include:

Involving adults with knowledge and experience of young people’s participation

Utilising a range of diverse participation mechanisms

Understanding participation as a ‘whole’ process of learning and change

Openness and reciprocal learning between children and adults

An incremental and realistic approach to goal setting and developing trust/confidence

Visibility in the results

Embedding at different levels and spatial scales

Challenges

Despite the compelling arguments in favour of children’s participation in the planning system, a number of barriers exist.

There is a general lack of awareness of the purpose, benefits or skills required for facilitating young participation among planners. Children are often viewed as being incapable of engaging in a meaningful way, despite research concluding otherwise.

Children’s participation in planning is frequently still viewed as ‘special’, rather than as part of general community engagement processes. It tends to be focused specifically on children’s services, rather than the wider range of universal services, and takes the form of consultation, rather than proper involvement in every phase of the decision making process.

A number of political and structural barriers also limit children’s potential influence – such as competing interests within the planning system and the short timescales often required for decisions. This can mean that even when the intentions are there, planners themselves may have limited time or influence over the decision making process.

Future steps

However, these challenges are not insurmountable. As we have seen, through its influence on the design of the urban environment, the town planning system has a huge impact upon the wellbeing and development of children. By involving children in the design of their local environment, it can help create environments that support children to reach their fullest potential.

Children who are involved and interested in their local environment will hopefully grow up to become adults who are involved and interested in their local environment. The town planning system is in a unique position to help facilitate this. And as Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia has said:

“If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people”.

Keen to make your city more child-friendly? Next month we look at the characteristics of child-friendly urban design.

According to the Alzheimer’s Society, there are currently around 850,000 people living with some form of dementia in the UK. Although the risk of developing dementia increases with age, it is not just a disease of the elderly. There are currently around 40,000 people with dementia in the UK under the age of 65.

The vast majority of cases of dementia cannot be cured. However, there is a lot that can be done to enable someone with dementia to live well with the condition. Many people with dementia can continue lead active, healthy lives for years after diagnosis. Even most elderly people with mild to moderate dementia can continue to live in their own homes.

The importance of good urban design

Evidence has shown that well-planned, enabling environments can have a substantial impact on the quality of life of someone living with dementia and their ability to retain their independence for longer.

For example, being within easy walking distance of shops and other local amenities can help people with dementia to remain physically active and encourages social interaction.

Having access to green space and nature also has particular benefits, including better mood, memory and communication and improved concentration.

Key characteristics of a dementia-friendly environment

Drawing on the principles set out in ‘Neighbourhoods for Life’, the RTPI advises that urban environments should be:

Familiar – functions of places and buildings made obvious, any changes are small scale and incremental;

Legible – a hierarchy of street types, which are short and fairly narrow. Clear signage;

Distinctive – including a variety of landmarks and a variety of practical features, e.g. trees and street furniture;

Accessible – access to amenities such as shops, doctor’s, post offices and banks within easy, safe and comfortable walking distances (5-10 minutes). Obvious, easy to use entrances that conform to disabled access regulations;

Comfortable – open space is well defined with public toilets, seating, shelter and good lighting. Background and traffic noise minimised through planting and fencing. Minimal street clutter;

In addition to specific guidance on how to improve the urban environment, the RTPI practice note also highlights the crucial role of planners in the creation of ‘Dementia Friendly Communities’.

This is a recognition process, which publicly acknowledges communities for their work towards becoming dementia friendly. It aims to involve the entire community, from local authorities and health boards to local shops, in the creation of communities that support the needs of people with dementia.

There are 10 key areas of focus. Those particularly relevant to planning include:

shaping communities around the needs and aspirations of people with dementia;

By 2025, it is estimated that the number of people diagnosed with dementia will rise to over one million. Significant under diagnosis means that the number of people who experience dementia may be even higher.

However, the RTPI report that at present few local authorities have made explicit reference to dementia in their adopted local plans.

Worcestershire County Council and Plymouth City Council are notable exceptions:

Worcestershire are currently developing a draft Planning for Health Supplementary Planning Document that covers age-friendly environments and dementia.

A beneficial environment for all

While these are important first steps towards the greater recognition of the role of planning in supporting people with dementia, it is imperative that planning explicitly for dementia becomes the rule, rather than the exception.

Not only will this benefit people with dementia and reduce healthcare costs, it may also benefit the wider community, including young families, people with disabilities, and older people.

As the RTPI rightly state, “environments that are easy for people to access, understand, use and enjoy are beneficial to everyone, not just older people with dementia.”

Enjoy this? You may be interested in our other blogs on related topics:

On average, the UK’s population is becoming older and living longer, healthier lives. This is due to historically low fertility rates and reduced mortality rates. Between 2014 and 2039, the government predicts that over 70% of UK population growth will be in the over 60 age group. Although this trend is partially countered by migration, by 2037 there will be 1.42 million more households headed by someone aged 85 or over.

The implications of population ageing for society are so complex and far reaching that they are impossible to fully predict. However, a key priority is the provision of age-friendly environments. This is where local government, and planning departments in particular, have a crucial role to play.

In this blog post – the first of two on the implications of population ageing for planning – we highlight some key areas for consideration.

Some areas will be more affected than others

While headline-grabbing statistics paint a very clear picture of the significant growth in the number of older people that is predicted, often they obscure the subtleties of the way in which population ageing will occur across the UK.

In reality, it is likely that population ageing will not occur equally in all areas of the UK. The degree to which some local authorities – and therefore planning departments – will be affected varies considerably.

The impact of population ageing is measured by a ‘dependency ratio’ – the number of people aged over 65 for every person between 16 and 64.

Recent research has found that coastal localities are likely to have higher dependency ratios than urban areas. Urban areas will, however, experience a larger overall number of older people.

Dependency ratios will vary considerably between local authorities. On average, it is predicted that by 2036, there will be over four people aged over 65 for every 10 people aged between 16-64. However, local figures are likely to vary – from just over 1 in 10 in Tower Hamlets, up to 8 in 10 in West Somerset.

And while there is awareness of the growth in the overall numbers of ‘older people’, another complexity is that ‘older people’ are not a homogenous group.

As life expectancy increases, the differences between different age groups become more significant. For example, there are variations in the needs, tastes and lifestyles between the ‘older old’, i.e. those aged over 80, and the ‘young old’ who are just approaching retirement age.

Some planning departments are already taking this into consideration. Northumberland County Council – who have a higher than average number of older people within their population – use a three phase definition as part of their strategy to prepare for the ageing population. They categorise ‘older people’ into three distinct groups: older workers; ‘third agers’; and older people in need of care.

Understanding social impact and interpretation

The physical environment is commonly understood to be a ‘societal context’ in which ageing occurs. This is reflected in the term ‘physical-social environment’ – it suggests that there is no physical environment without social interpretation.

However, recent research has found that while planners were reasonably aware of the physical needs of older people, they were less aware of the social and economic contexts of older people’s lives. This included the links between wellbeing and attractive environments, green space, activity and health, and the positive impact of place attractiveness on social interaction.

Related to this, older people’s social interpretation of the built environment – including the importance of place meanings, memories and attachments ­– is likely to become an increasingly important consideration for planners. As too is the potential effect of redevelopment on older people – which may include feelings of insecurity and alienation, disorientation, loss of independence, and social exclusion.

Involving older people in the planning system

How to effectively involve older people in the planning system in an increasingly technology-dependent age will pose a number of challenges.

Planners will need to think creatively about options for engagement. Increasingly, social media platforms and other online media have been used to engage with users. However, these technologies may not be readily accessible or easily used by older people due to a lack of technological skills or access to the internet.

Older people may also need certain adaptations to support them to become involved – either online or in person – if they have physical or other disabilities.

Negative assumptions about technology’s usefulness held by some older people may need to be challenged or worked around.

Supporting healthy and happy lives

There is no way to fully predict the impact that population ageing will have across all sections of society. Developing our understanding of the way in which the built environment can help to support and enable older people to live happy and healthy lives – and the implications of this for planning towns and cities across the UK – is increasingly important.

In our next blog post we will look at some of the ways in which planners can help support the creation of age-friendly environments through their influence on the design of the urban environment, transport, housing and the wider community and neighbourhood.